How the Marketing Automation Software Advisor Works
The Napier marketing automation software advisor asks questions about your database and target customers to understand which of the many different marketing automation platforms would be most suitable for you. It’s intended as an initial guide, rather than providing an absolute solution for your campaign: everyone’s situation is different so it’s always worth talking with Napier to find out if anything might change our initial recommendations.
The system uses rule-based AI logic to identify a marketing automation system that meets your needs and best fits your database size and other requirements. The tool considers things such as the importance of ease-of-use to determine which of the different products on the market today would best fit your needs.
The marketing automation software advisor won’t always have a solution, and if it’s not sure it will tell you.
Currently the following tactics are addressed by the marketing automation advisor:
Marketo
Marketo is owned by Adobe, and is a scalable and powerful marketing automation system. Although the user interface can be quite intimidating and difficult to use, it is able to cope with extremely large databases and offers powerful content personalisation capabilities. The platform supports omnichannel communications with support for mobile messaging and social media.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Pardot)
Pardot is an interesting solution, IF you are a Salesforce customer. We understand that now you cannot buy Pardot as a stand-alone product. The integration with Salesforce is a benefit, and there are a number of interesting features including custom redirects and completion actions, but overall we find the system to be limited and a bit outdated.
HubSpot
Hubspot offers a wide range of features well beyond marketing automation, with a build-in CRM as well as customer service capabilities. The tool also offers other features, such as SEO capabilities. Although free tiers are available, the pricing can increase rapidly as you move to the paid tiers to get the features you need. HubSpot deserves its reputation for being easy-to-use and offers very powerful reporting. Note that some features such as website customisation are only available if you build your website using the HubSpot CMS.
SharpSpring
SharpSpring has a reputation for putting functionality over looks and ease of use. The tool is powerful and scalable and includes a capable CRM. SharpSpring includes a wide range of features and capabilities including social media support.
Oracle Eloqua
Eloqua has established a strong presence in some markets and offers powerful capabilities, although can be difficult to use. Like most large marketing automation platforms Eloqua doesn’t offer a built-in CRM but connects natively with Oracle CRM and Salesforce.
Act-On
Act-on is another mid-market solution that has a strong range of features. It includes strategy planning capabilities and has a focus on features that support the development and running of ABM campaigns.
Keap
Keap (formally called Infusionsoft) is an extremely popular solution for smaller companies. It is easy-to-use and offers a good range of features, but can have some limitations as your database or number of users scale to enterprise levels.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is known as an email tool, but is adding marketing automation functionality. With support for forms and landing pages, Mailchimp offers basic marketing automation capabilities for smaller organisations.